the rainbow - then & now

The Rainbow - Noah and Now9:8 Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: 9 “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants[ after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. 11 Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”12 And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: 13 I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. 14 It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud;15 and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth” (Gen. 9:8-17 NKJV).

We have seen how the Flood devastated the earth. In addition to destroying all animals of land and air, tectonic plates shifted causing mountains to rise and the sea floor of the deep trenches of the Atlantic and Pacific to fall. This shifting of the topography make a future worldwide flood a physical impossibility – there simply is not enough water to cover the higher peaks.In these verses, God makes a covenant with Noah and Noah’s descendants (us). The covenant is one-sided. God promises not to flood the world again for the purpose of destroying all life. Noah, as mankind’s representative, is a recipient of this promise. God requires nothing in return.

God’s symbolic representation of the covenant is a rainbow. Formed by the reflection and refraction of light on water droplets, the multi-colored arc appears in the sky opposite the sun. Think of it as light (order) establishing itself in darkness (disorder). The rainbow is a memorial to God and all people that He will not cause such a flood (disorder) again.The rainbow has been used as a symbol of many things: peace; the path to a pot of gold; and the LGBT community, among others.Before talking about abuse of the rainbow as a symbol, let’s understand two things: what God is communicating, and what the symbol means in the physical and spiritual senses.

First, recall in Genesis 6:6: And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart (NKJV). With the free will granted by God, mankind had not turned out as intended. Not only did they not follow the rules, but because of disobedience they were unhappy and creating more unhappiness. God did not create living beings for the purpose of suffering.That God was sorry (NKJV), repented (KJV), regretted (ESV) and other variations on these translations implies that God has made an error in creating humans, that He is not infallible. We must not judge God by our standard, but must look more closely at what is being communicated.This translation of the Hebrew nacham (H5162) from Strong’s reads as follows:“A primitive root; properly to sigh, that is, breathe strongly; by implication to be sorry, that is, (in a favorable sense) to pity, console or (reflexively) rue; or (unfavorably) to avenge (oneself): - comfort (self), ease [one’s self], repent (-er, -ing, self).”Considering God’s character, the most appropriate understanding is the primitive root, probably the primary meaning at the time of the book’s composition: to sigh,…that is,…to pity.Substituting this understanding fits for virtually every Old Testament use of the Hebrew word while not reflecting negatively on God. We cause God to sigh, through the Old and New Testaments until now and beyond. God does not regret or repent because of His error, but sighs because of our stubbornness.

The Flood was not an act of anger. It was grief's response: compassion and righteousness in action together.

When we look at the misery of the past and of the present, little can be attributed directly to God. Mankind has made life miserable pretty much on their own. The Flood was God’s plan for starting over, a onetime event.

And we need not view the rainbow as a new thing, something unfamiliar to Noah or the people of the world. There were rivers (Genesis 2:10-13), and there were the sun and seas (Gen. 1:10,15). We might expect that although the Bible does not mention rain or rainbows, they existed as part of nature’s water cycle (see Answers In Genesis comments here). The important points are that the Flood and the promise were definitely new.

New or not, the rainbow is set before Noah as a sign of a new promise. Although God is speaking to Noah specifically that there would be no flood in the future, He has already given a larger promise:“…Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done (Gen. 8:21 NKJV).”Regardless of mankind’s actions, God will not destroy the earth again.

This brings us to the second point concerning the use of the rainbow as a secular symbol.For millennia the rainbow was a miracle of nature. There was no understanding of the principles of light and refraction. Was the “miracle” destroyed when science gave a technical explanation and removed the mystery?No, there is still something in (or beyond) the rainbow that calls to us. Witness Judy Garland singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” or, more recently, Kermit the Frog singing “The Rainbow Connection.”These are just two examples from popular culture of the hope for something better on the other side of the rainbow. This is a statement that we know that something is missing here but that it exists over there.

The symbol of the rainbow – then and now – is hope.

Speaking to Noah, God is calling men and women to see the symbol of the rainbow and to remember what is beyond it.The symbol of the rainbow is diversity, originating in Oneness and unified in One, an infinitesimal number of colors originating from a single source of light. We identify the 7 colors of ROY G BIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet), but there are innumerable fine lines of color in between plus many more “colors” invisible to the naked eye beyond each end.

Every rock and every living thing is composed of a unique arrangement of those rainbow colors (and beyond), because every entity may be described in terms of particles or waves but, like light, is described accurately only in terms of both.As a collection of particles (physical), we are unique and single. As a collection of waves (light, or energy), we are unique and intimately connected.​The rainbow is the natural response to the laws governing particles and waves. We can look at this side of the rainbow as the physical/light side, and the other side of the rainbow as the wave/light side. The rainbow is the result of the union of the two properties, matter and energy.The hope is the union of our physical and spiritual natures in their original intent. Next article